SUL SUL! MY TOP 5 SIMS PACKS
STORY AND ILLUSTRATION BY CARLY HART
Whether you feel like you need a way to live out your dreams or simply want to start fake drama, The Sims 4 is the ultimate game for exploring any story. However, the base game can become a little boring over time. You can purchase downloadable content (DLC) for the game, but with so many pricey DLCs, it can be hard to know which ones are worth it.
These are my top 5 Sims 4 DLCs (that I own):
5. Discover UniversitY
As a college student, I enjoy playing out my journey through a Sim. In the base game, you go directly from high school to work. With Discover University, you get the chance to establish your Sim’s skills more and give them a more realistic experience in their career growth.
This pack also adds dorms and student housing, which can provide a refreshing setting if you have been playing the game with the same household for a long time. However, my only complaint about this pack is the amount of work required for college. While it is a realistic experience, I have the time to eat and go out while getting good grades; my Sim does not.
4. Parenthood
This expansion pack adds more depth to parent-child relationships compared to the base game. You gain parenting skills, and how you react to your children will impact their future traits. Also, you gain more after-school activities, allowing for more well-rounded kids and opportunities for them to level up their skills.
Parenthood also contains consequences and rewards. While it is easy to lose and gain relationships in The Sims, Parenthood allows for more in-depth parent-child relationships.
I do not own Growing Together; however, I have seen a lot about how it feels like an expanded version of Parenthood. Both packs have their own unique features.
3. Life and Death
Prior to this DLC, death in The Sims occurred in ridiculous ways or from old age. Death would cause your Sim to be sad for two days and then move on. They would also have moodlets, which would indicate whether they were their parents or strangers.
With this pack, you get end-of-life planning, inheritance, funerals, expanded grief, improved ghosts as an occult, and more. The relationship level of your Sims directly affects how your Sim responds to another Sim’s death, removing sad moodlets from acquaintances.
It gives the elder stage of life more depth as well. Instead of elders retiring and just enjoying their hobbies, they can create wills, pass down knowledge, and continue into their afterlife.
My complaint about this pack is the abundance of ghosts and frequency of death in the game. With the “Reaper Career,” many Sims pass, making the grief moodlet an annoyance. The career itself also gets very repetitive once you climb to the top.
Overall, I loved this pack because of the depth it added to the game and my Sims’ lives, Create-a-Sim (CAS), and building items.
2. Businesses and Hobbies
Make your Sim’s hobby into a business and live on the same lot! With the Get to Work expansion pack, you could own a business but you had to live on a separate lot. Businesses and Hobbies adds new hobbies and a unique business structure. It offers a unique career path that can be worked into almost any storyline or challenge you are playing through.
While I enjoy this pack, it is difficult to stock and run the store on your own if you are trying to run a realistically sized store while also having other priorities.
1. Seasons
Many think this should be a part of the base game, but it is unfortunately not. In terms of DLC, this expands the world of The Sims so much. You get differing weather from day to day, seasons, calendars, and holidays. The addition of seasons and weather mixes up your daily gameplay. It also gives a deeper sense of the passage of time.
While there are preset holidays, you can customize and add your own with unique tasks for each day. You can also use it to plan birthdays, weddings, and everything in between. The weather element overall makes the game feel more realistic and immersive. Just like in real life, a bad day gets worse with a little bit of rain.
This expansion pack also adds a lot of good build items as well as CAS. Seasons was a pack I was set on getting and one of the few I don’t regret buying.
Despite the fact that The Sims 4 team has conned me out of my money since 2014, it is one of my favorite games to date. When you are investing in a game, you should get the best bang for your buck. I hope this ranking helps you decide on your next pack, especially if you were on the fence about some of them.
P.S. Definitely wait for older packs to go on sale, which happens frequently!
